question had little understanding, could never have become popular in
the same degree. Rome possessed but few works of this master which could
have served as examples, and those not the most important. Still,
reminiscences of the best Attic style were not wanting, especially in
those figures of the gods the type of which had been established by
Pheidias, as in the statues of Zeus and Athene. The chryselephantine
Zeus, by Polycles and Dionysios, in Metellus’s Temple of Jupiter, as
also the Capitoline of the same material by Apollonios, may justly be
referred to the Olympian original; the former at least with the more
certainty, when it is considered that the sons of Polycles--Timocles and
Timarchides--copied the sculptures upon a shield of the Parthenos for an
Athene, designed for Elateia in Phokis. It is possible--and this may,
perhaps, be still further established by Brunn, who has pointed out this
connection--that the Pallas in the Villa Ludovisi, by Antiochos of
Athens, which has been estimated below its worth, may be a reproduction
of the Parthenos, modified and perhaps formed from memory. The treatment
of the garments, and the whole position of this otherwise ill-executed
figure, remind us of the chryselephantine works, and possess something
of the dignity and nobility of the better period.
[Illustration: Fig. 244.--Group by Menelaos. (In the Villa Ludovisi.)]
At a time when Cicero could say that in his opinion “the works of
Polycleitos were perfectly beautiful” the master from Argos must have
come into fashion. The artistic representative of this stage of
appreciative development was Pasiteles, who worked in the time of
Pompey, and whose important school has left traces of this influence in
examples that have been preserved. The pathetic tendency was not
entirely to be avoided, and, though not so evident in the academic male
figure of the Villa Albani, which bears the name of Stephanos, the
scholar of Pasiteles, is yet undeniable in the groups of Orestes and
Electra in Naples, and of Orestes and Pylades in the Louvre. This trait
is still more marked in a work of Menelaos, the scholar of Stephanos,
the beautiful and celebrated group in the Villa Ludovisi (_Fig._ 244),
designated by Winckelmann and Welcker as Electra and Orestes; by Jahn,
as Merope and Cresphontes; by Kekulé, as Deianeira and Hyllos; and by
Schulze and Burckhardt, as Penelope and Telemachos. Though the artist
has here made concessions to more recent influences, they did not give
the work an eclectic character, as asserted by Kekulé, but rather
displayed a somewhat archaistic conception, and the short proportions of
Polycleitos, long since abandoned for the canon of Lysippos. On the
other hand, the remark of Kekulé appears just, that the characters do
not seem conceived and modelled after nature, but rather as seen
through the medium of the tragedy of Euripides.
When the reproductions had run through the entire circle of styles from
the best period of art, the archaic was at last brought forward. It is
known that Augustus ornamented his buildings, particularly the gable of
the Palatine Temple of Apollo, with sculptures of the masters from
Chios, Boupalos and Athenis, and that he also carried away from Tegea
the Athene of the old Attic Endoios. Archaic art, always possessing a
charm for devotional images which was doubled in a time of such satiety,
came thus into fashion. A large number of archaistic works appeared,
imitated after the antique, as has already been mentioned. They not
seldom betray the influence of single figures from larger compositions
in relief, as in the instance of the Amphora of the Athenian Sosibios in
the Louvre.
[Illustration: Fig. 245.--Capitoline Centaur of Aristeas and Papias.
(Capitoline Museum.)]
The more or less free reproductiveness of this period, which we have to
thank for a large proportion of the contents of our museums, naturally
came to a conclusion in that unbridled mixture of style which combined
in the same relief not only the various aims of different schools, but
their well-known motives, as is the case with the relief of the Salpion
upon the font of Gaeta. There was very little originality, and that was
limited to genre, particularly to the idyllic, as in the play of Cupids,
the best of which might be referred to old models. It is not known
whether this was the case with the lioness of Arkesilaos, in the
possession of Varro, which, according to Pliny’s description, bound by
Cupids, was drinking from a horn, with mittens upon the paws to render
them harmless. Models for this may be sought in the paintings of
Alexandria. It is certain that the centaurs, bound and worried by
Cupids, the best examples of which are preserved in the Louvre, the
Vatican, the Doria Palace, and the Capitoline Museum, with that of
Aristeas and Papias from Aphrodisias, are imitations of bronze
originals. (_Fig._ 245.)
* * * * *
Hellenic architecture and sculpture, from their unsurpassed perfection,
require a more comprehensive treatment than that accorded to those arts
in any other ancient nation. This is especially the case with sculpture,
because, in Greece, the demands of its nature were more completely
fulfilled by the Greeks than has ever happened, at any time, with any
other people; while Grecian architecture, notwithstanding its wonderful
monumental perfection, did not deal with all the possibilities of the
art. Both, however, demand our attention in a greater degree than does
Hellenic painting. Architecture has left great masses of ruins, and
sculpture numerous collections of antique treasures; but of Grecian
painting there are no remains; its history is accordingly a history
rather of artists than of art. If this necessitates for painting a more
limited treatment, we must not therefore conclude that its development
was, in reality, inferior to that of its sister arts, since, in fact, it
fully equalled that of architecture and sculpture. This has often been
unjustly doubted, but it would be fully evident were nothing more known
than the almost measureless fame of the first masters.
The course of development of Grecian painting is by no means so obvious
as that of sculpture: we have no sure date of its beginning, but it is
at least equally remote. Conze shows painting to have been even the most
primitive, it having existed among the aborigines in the decoration of
pottery and terra-cotta. The notes of Pliny upon the matter (xxxv. 15)
appear to be hardly more than a supplementary reconstruction of a
conjectured state of development, garnished vaguely with the names of
ancient artists. The first stages, the employment of a simple tone in
the filling of outline figures with a color of brick-dust, called
monochromatic painting, had long since been mastered by the neighboring
peoples--the Mesopotamians, Phœnicians, and Egyptians, who were
acquainted also with the use of bright colors. This work must early have
been known to the Greeks through imported articles--Homer mentioning
vessels and fabrics--even though they could not apply it to the
productions of their own land. Monochromatic painting upon pottery,
familiar to the primitive Ionians, seems to have originated upon the
Syro-Phœnician coasts. A faint reminiscence of the ancient, widely
extended employment of color may be found in Pliny, who designates an
Egyptian, bearing the Greek name of Philocles, as the discoverer of
linear painting. Works of this kind, however, were purely decorative,
like the older Greek vase-paintings (_Figs._ 187 and 191), and of great
similarity; it seems unnecessary to offer conjectures as to the source
whence this impulse came. Of still less significance are the names of
artists which have been fabulously attached to the various inventions,
such as Cleanthes, Aridikes, and Ecphantos, of Corinth; Telephanes and
Craton, of Sikyon; and Saurias, of Samos. Unless, from the fact that
several are mentioned as dwelling in Corinth and Sikyon, it may be
concluded that decorative painting probably flourished in those cities
before the sixtieth Olympiad (530 B.C.). What Pliny says of Eumaros of
Athens does not justify the supposition of any considerable progress,
although, in figures, he distinguished between male and female,
expressed in some slight degree age and characteristic peculiarities,
and, at least, made an end to that crudeness which found satisfaction in
writing names over forms otherwise precisely alike. Greater progress was
made by his successor, Kimon of Cleonæ--500 to 480 B.C.--who improved
the former sack-like garments (_Fig._ 191) by folds, and gave a more
detailed drawing to the nude, placing the eye in a profile head also in
profile, instead of making it look towards the front, as in the figure
mentioned above. With him began truthfulness to nature, and correctness
of drawing, at a time when sculpture in Ægina, Athens, Sikyon, and Argos
was preparing for that highest perfection attained afterwards by
Pheidias.
After the Persian war, through two generations, the progress of painting
was proportionate to its former backwardness, until it attained a
height little short of that reached by sculpture. The first master
worthy of mention--and likewise one of the greatest artists we
know--demands particular attention, from having been the founder of
painting as an art. Polygnotos of Thasos (475 to 455 B.C.), the son of
Aglaophon, who also is mentioned as a painter, executed the greater
number of his works in Athens, where he was much respected by Kimon. Of
the pictures in the Stoa Poikile, painted under his direction, at least
the Conquest of Troy, and the Council of Princes sitting in judgment
upon the sacrilege committed by Ajax against Cassandra, were by his
hand. The Battle of the Amazons was by Micon, the Battle of Marathon by
Panainos and Micon; the fourth, perhaps the latest, was the Battle
between the Athenians and Lacedæmonians near Oinoe: the artist is not
known. Polygnotos worked, together with Micon, upon other Athenian
frescos, scenes from the lives of heroes in the Temple of Theseus. In
the Temple of the Dioscuri he painted the Rape of the Daughters of
Leukippos, next to which was the Return of the Argonauts, by Micon. In
the Pinacotheca of the Propylæa was a series of representations, among
which Brunn has recognized as companion pieces Diomedes Robbing
Philoctetes of his Bow, and Odysseus Seizing the Palladion; the Murder
of Ægisthos by Orestes, and the Sacrifice of Polyxena; Odysseus
Appearing before Nausicaa and her Companions, and Achilles among the
Daughters of Lycomedes. Of the other works by this master may be
mentioned those at Thespeia and Plataia; that in the Temple of Athene at
the latter place represented Odysseus attacking the suitors. The best of
all the creations of Polygnotos, the paintings in the Lesche of the
Cnidians at Delphi, illustrating the conquest of Ilion and the nether
world, are so minutely described by Pausanias (x. 25-31) that they
furnish the most important material for an understanding of his art.
We should hardly be able justly to estimate this master were it not for
the descriptions of Pausanias; for the other classic authors, with some
exceptions in Aristotle, deal only with secondary matters. In regard to
his coloring, Cicero, in his “Four Colors,” says nothing, speaking only
of his drawing, while Quintilian merely wonders how, in his time, there
could still be admirers of such primitive painting. It was merely a
coloring without light and shade, a simple treatment by local tones of
surfaces within outlines. That these tones were not unbroken, as upon
the Nile and Tigris, but finely graded and everywhere characteristic, we
learn from the special mention of the doves, of the shaded coloring of
the fish in the Acheron, of the blackish-blue color of the
corpse-devouring Eurynomos, and of the gray of the shipwrecked Ajax. The
red cheeks of Cassandra, admired by Lucian, give evidence of several
colors within the same outline. But though Cicero praises the drawing,
the little which is intelligible in Pliny’s account of the master tends
the other way. Still, it must be acknowledged that more is implied by
the motive of the Olympian Jupiter, by the encomium upon Cassandra’s
eyebrows by Lucian, and by the exaggerated expression of an epigram--“in
the lids of Polyxena lay the whole Trojan war”--than the petty
peculiarities with which Pliny invests the painter would lead us to
expect. Ælian praises the strict carefulness and fineness of the outline
drawing, the expression, and the garments. But the most remarkable
testimony concerning this master is that of Aristotle, who describes his
figures as surpassing nature; while artists like Dionysios contented
themselves with equalling it, and others, like Pauson, were content to
remain below it. Elsewhere he calls him the painter of _ethics_--that
is, of character--in a grand style which the works of Zeuxis failed to
attain. Combining this judgment with that of Ælian, who ascribes
grandeur to Polygnotos, we may conclude that this artist drew in a broad
and ideal style. That to this were united an epic clearness and
liveliness of treatment, not only in the single figures and groups, but
in the entire composition, is fully evident from the description which
Pausanias gives of the paintings in the Lesche. In short, correctness,
richness, and grandeur of composition must be accounted the chief merits
of Polygnotos--merits to which none of his successors attained, though
they may have far surpassed him in execution, as painters in a more
restricted sense. Less painter than artist, he pursued, in his wall
decorations, a thoroughly monumental direction, which after his time,
through change of aim, was neglected.
The most celebrated companions of Polygnotos, but, as Ælian remarks, not
equalling him in greatness, were Micon of Athens, whose name has already
been mentioned, and Panainos, a cousin of Pheidias, who, besides the
battle of Marathon in the Poikile, executed the paintings upon the
throne of the Pheidian Zeus in Olympia. Dionysios of Colophon and Pauson
have already been spoken of. The first seems to have carried out the
strict carefulness of his model, Polygnotos, to a degree which was
naturally unfavorable alike to grace and to greatness of style. Pauson,
though accounted an artist by Aristotle, may be compared to Buffalmacco,
scorned and derided, among the companions of Giotto; not fitted for
productions of a grand style, he did not attempt them, and his nude
paintings, without ethical significance, were harmful to young
observers.
Among the other distinguished masters of this time, Calliphon appears
most nearly to have followed in the footsteps of Polygnotos; but his
brother Aristophon, who brought painting upon panels into general use,
pursued technical methods opposed to this school. The style of
Polygnotos was also abandoned by the Samian Agatharchos, a
self-instructed decorator and scene-painter who, in an essay upon
scenographic painting, established principles upon which, after his
time, this art was further developed. In scene-painting the
indispensable aim after illusory appearances must have led to the
observation and imitation of the effect of more or less light--that is
to say, of paler or deeper shades in the local color--and thus have
brought painting to a point of development not hitherto attained by any
nation of antiquity.
The important advance indicated by Agatharchos in scenography was made
in the painting of figures by Apollodoros of Athens. The accounts of him
are few, and in part incomprehensible; but Plutarch says plainly that he
discovered the mixing of colors and the variation of shade upon them,
and Pliny calls him the first master of illusion. Strictly speaking, he
was not the sole author of the innovation, since Agatharchos went before
him; and if he received the cognomen of _skiagraphos_--painter in light
and shade--it must be understood that the word skiagraphia was used to
signify scenography. But he was, at all events, the first to apply these
principles to figure-painting, developing a treatment quite different
from that employed in the architectural painting so extensively in use
for the stage. The important result of this innovation may well be
imagined, and it is not strange that the ground thus gained should have
been promptly occupied by other masters of the art, who rapidly brought
painting to a perfection almost equal to that of sculpture.
These were Zeuxis of Heraclea, in Lower Italy, and Parrhasios of
Ephesos. The teachers of the former are not of importance; the impulse
through which Zeuxis became one of the most brilliant geniuses of Greece
not having been given by these, but rather by Apollodoros, who is not
mentioned among them. His fame was at its height during the
Peloponnesian war, and in the following ten years; so that we can easily
understand why Zeuxis did not establish himself in Athens, where
Polygnotos and Apollodoros had raised painting to an art, but, after
many wanderings, found an asylum in Ephesos. His works, in contrast to
the wall-paintings of Polygnotos, were chiefly upon panels, as,
according to Pliny, we may suppose those of Apollodoros to have been.
Among those of Zeuxis, the Olympos was exceptional in regard to subject;
of the deities, Zeus is particularly celebrated. The only other
representations of the deities we find are the Rose-crowned Eros, and
Apollo Chastising Marsyas. Neither Pan, nor Heracles Strangling the
Serpents in his Infancy, can be reckoned in this category. The Trojan
legends appear in three of his more celebrated pictures--Helen in
Crotona, the Weeping Menelaos Bringing his Brother the Offering for the
Dead, and Penelope, “in whom propriety itself is embodied.” If we may
connect with the Odyssey, the Storm at Sea, in which Boreas and Triton
are mentioned, it will form a fourth. In his athletes he seems to have
intended to establish a canon for painting, as Polycleitos had done for
sculpture. Two others, the Family of Centaurs, and the Boy bearing
Grapes, are genre pictures.
It is not by chance that we have the fullest accounts of Zeuxis; his aim
not being so high as that of Polygnotos, he took his motives from other
fields more favorable to the new methods. Historic painting, the
foundation of that higher kind of monumental art which gives grand
representations of character, was forsaken; as Aristotle expresses it,
the works of Zeuxis were wanting in ethic significance. Excessive
striving after illusion, after the semblance of reality, brings forward
outward and momentary appearances, supplanting the inwardly essential
and lasting. Penelope seems to speak, and yet we know not in what
situation she is delineated; the weeping of Menelaos certainly does not
give his character; and as little does the merry play of the Centaurs
with their young, go charmingly described by Lucian, represent the
mythological nature of these monsters. Still less can we rank the Helen
of Zeuxis, in conception, upon a level with the female figures in the
Conquest of Troy by Polygnotos, since we know that Zeuxis chose as
models the loveliest virgins of Crotona; that is to say, sought after
perfect outward female beauty in truthfulness to nature, but not after
that breadth and grandeur expressed in the brow of Cassandra, or which
spoke in the glance of Polyxena.
If, at times, Zeuxis took a higher flight, he still differed from the
epic character of Polygnotos in his tendency to dramatic effect, which,
according to its nature, is transient. This is shown, for example, by
the celebrated play of countenance in the Family of Centaurs, the
weeping of Menelaos, the horror of Alcmene and Amphitryon at sight of
the serpents encircling the young Heracles, and by the actors as well as
spectators in the chastisement of Marsyas: these are all scenes which,
with slight modification, might be shown in dramatic action upon the
stage. With Zeuxis, contrary to Polygnotos, the subject was of less
importance than the manner of presenting it, the _what_ less than the
_how_; in short, the composition, in which the picturesque sufficed, was
subordinate to the painting. The master himself was displeased when the
novelty of the subject, in his family of Centaurs, caused the technical
finish to be overlooked. The expression of Pliny was therefore a just
one, that Zeuxis had given great glory to the brush. The judgment of
Quintilian that Zeuxis originated the correct application of light and
shade is not to be disputed, in so far as this refers to the consequent
achievement of expression. The degree of perfection he attained in
illusive effects, by chiaroscuro, reflections, and the like, is
illustrated by the anecdote of the boy with grapes, so deceptive that
the birds flew towards them; at the same time, the limitation is shown,
as the artist himself acknowledged, in that the illusion had not
succeeded in making the boy capable of frightening the birds. It was
because of the painter’s power in this realism that his contemporaries
regarded him with almost boundless admiration. His fame was exceeded
only by his vanity. In later years he presented his pictures as gifts,
because it was impossible to recompense them with money; he appeared at
Olympia clothed with a garment upon which his name was embroidered in
golden letters. The history of Greek sculpture has no parallel to such
conceits.